1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus, method and program for editing images.
2. Description of Related Art
Various editing methods are known for effectively using image data depending on the purpose of uses.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 5-89103 (A) discloses a document editing and processing apparatus for automatically renumbering graphics numbers, drawing numbers and table numbers that are referred to in a document in the process of renumbering numbers in the vicinity of such graphics, drawings and tables in the document according to the editing such as addition, insertion, deletion and replacement of pages. In the apparatus, the numbers before editing, the new numbers, and the locations in a document of the graphics, drawings and tables are inputted by the user.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 8-255160 (A) discloses an editing method for automatically laying out visually recognizable information such as characters, graphics, photographs and images within a specified area. The method provides a means of automatically adding layout information for displaying electronic image data on a display device.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 10-228473 (A) discloses a method of automatically generating links between drawings such as diagrams and tables included in the image and the text related thereto, and converting them into hypertexts.
The method includes the steps of detecting captions, detecting specified character strings related to drawings from the captions, and detecting character strings identical to the detected character strings from character areas to generate links between the character strings in the captions and the character strings in the character areas, based on the positional relations between the areas where the diagrams and tables exist and neighboring character areas. A caption is a character string provided in the vicinity of a drawing and contains notations or descriptions for identification the drawing.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 11-85741 (A) discloses a method of editing for automatically laying out drawing numbers, which are a kind of notations for identification drawings, in optimum locations. In the method, the drawing numbers are automatically allocated to the drawings based on the setting of drawing number parameters.
On the other hand, when a plurality of documents are copied simultaneously, there can be several identical drawing numbers and page numbers. Consequently, the relations between the drawings and the drawing numbers as well as page orders can be confusing and contradictory. This makes it difficult to compiling documents and may lower the documents' values.
On the other hand, the apparatus disclosed by Publication No. 5-89103 requires the user to specify the information concerning renumbering, so that it places a heavy burden on the user. The method disclosed by Publication No. 8-255160 is intended for the layout of documents such as newspapers and magazines where drawing numbers are not indicated.
The method disclosed by Publication No. 10-228473 is simply using the existing drawing numbers. The method disclosed by Publication No. 11-85741 is to re-allocate drawing numbers. Therefore, these methods disclosed on the Publications cannot deal with the present problem.